visions of america

A Children’s Treasury of Sincere Comments Praising Wal-Mart

Last week we mentioned that a half-dozen heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune own more than the 100,000,000 Americans at the wrong end of the U.S. Pyramid of Poverty, which is gigantic on the bottom and narrow in the middle and just a teeny tiny point on the top that controls all the wealth in this irredeemably corrupt welfare-capitalism police state of desperate, insane “consumers.” We also noted that one of the heiresses to this outrageous stockpile of American wealth has been throwing around about a billion dollars to construct and fill up a vulgar Fine Art museum in Arkansas, in a ditch behind the Wal-Mart headquarters. Within a few days, we began finding lots and lots of pro-Wal-Mart comments from people who have never commented on Wonkette before. It’s a Festivus miracle!

This first comment was left by somebody who also likes to leave comments about the greatness of Wal-Mart on other sites, like this Yahoo Finance message board. But here’s the one “she” left on Wonkette:

From: tramlaw (shep_____@yahoo.com) with an IP address in Bentonville, Arkansas:

It is unreal to me how much hate is shown in people writing about Walmart. Well, Walmart has provided people with affordable goods when the mom and pop shops and others have goughed them. I don’t hear anyone bashing those who charged poor consumers really high prices. The Crystal Bridges museum is a one of a kind museum that will be probably the best in America and right in the heart of America. Being so critical of a family because of its wealth sounds to me like coveting your neighbor’s wordly goods. As for me, give me Walmart’s low prices so I can afford my utilities and real estate taxes and I will shop Walmart until my dying day as long as they continue to be customer friendly.

OMG, coveting the wealth of rich evil slime who never worked a day in their lives, why that is like something one might find in the Holy Bible! Let’s see, maybe that bit about about it being impossible for the filthy rich to go the Heaven? Jesus Christ Our Lord said that. He also said that anyone who believe in Him shall give away all they have and follow Him. Or, alternately, you could dump a billion dollars into the marquee architecture and fine art markets, to impress the Koch Brothers or whatever.

But this next one sounds less like a $35K junior P.R. staffer in Bentonville and more like the usual suburban rage dad who still can’t believe people in their mid-30s are living in cities and eating organic food and going to see bands, what is wrong with these hipsters? Everyone in their 30s should be like Erick Erickson, after all: Swollen red-nosed pus-bags who bought McMansions at the top of the market and now can’t get out, even with a lucrative CNN gig:

From: thomashodge

Oh how enlightened the writer and several commenters are, first claiming to be seriously concerned about plight of the average Walmart worker while at the same time making fun of “white trash”, the entire state of Arkansas and the people who shop at Wal mart. Ha-ha, being a bigoted snob is hilarious! How wonderful to live in Washington or New York and thus be better than someone living in the South. Also, where do those Southerners get off thinking they can appreciate art!? It’s crazy. The fact that Walmart single-lowered inflation by about 8% during the 90s, which has done much more for the poor than almost any government program is beside the point. Now let’s all go to Target, by the same Chinese made group but pay $2 more so we can continue to feel superior. We’ll even pronounce “Tarjay” because we are so hip and ironic! Yay us!

Yeah, you nailed it dood! Damned pretty girls and their intellects and whatever! All they really like is shopping at other warehouse-hell stores, probably. [Wal-Mart Museum a “Moral Blight”]

As a foreign, eurotrash, damned-to-hell hippie, I've only ever set foot in a Wal-mart once or twice. I can't say I met or saw a single employee who looked anything but miserable as hell.
It was like Dawn of the Dead, with less shooting and the zombies in nametags.

SorosBot

I am proud to say that, the one time I entered a Wal-Mart, I was kicked out. (It was while doing a scavenger hunt in college, where one of the items was as many receipts from a Wal-Mart between noon and one on the Saturday of the hunt as possible).

b[redact]opple

Oh. That shouldn't have been too hard. I had to go to Canada and steal a Canadian highway cone.

Wasn't that the one where they nuked Louisville to contain the zombie outbreak?

Redhead

Don't forget the crackheads!

mormos

I worked there for a year. It was probably the most miserable time in my life. I used to joke that they painted the walls blue so we would remember what the sky looked like.

On the plus side, you don't really have to do anything while there. I knew people who would clock in, leave for six hours (they don't want you there long enough to have to give you breaks or benefits), then come back and clock out.

Loaded_Pants

One of my friends worked there for 2 years. He & his coworkers would pilfer the wine (I know, I know–Riunite & Sutter Home *shudder*) to medicate the misery of having to work there.

tessiee

"I've only ever set foot in a Wal-mart once or twice. I can't say I met or saw a single employee who looked anything but miserable as hell."

The people shopping there don't look all that happy, either. I forget who the comedian was who said, "They look like they're buying stuff to beat each other with".

BaldarTFlagass

So, this Walmart Fine Art Museum. That will be fun to curate. Dogs Playing Cards, Velvet Elvises, and the little sad looking kids with the big head and huge sad eyes?

Negropolis

Also, Billy the Big-Mouth Bass. Also.

V572 the Merciless

"Lookit that pit bull, Cletus — he's doublin down!"

True story: the county executive of St Louis County, whose wife loved dogs, turned the erstwhile mansion of a departed Monsanto polluter into a Dog Museum, which is dedicated to art depicting dogs, including the dogs playing poker. You were even allowed to bring your pooch, until the piddling got out of hand.

That politician, Gene McNary, had to take a job as head of the then-INS to escape the ridicule.

Oh no they did not actually say "rouge [sic] website," I thought to myself, and then went to the link and saw that oh yes indeed they did! Rouge Website = Red Menace Commies on the InternetsTubes®!!!1!! Nuke it NOW!, advises the friendly, ready-to-take-your-call law firm!

not that Dewey

We report, you decide.

GOPCrusher

"New" website? Obviously these people don't get out on the Internet enough.

Biel_ze_Bubba

Photos of actual WalMart shoppers, actually shopping at actual WalMarts, are "in poor taste." At least they get the point, sort of.

not that Dewey

The same demographic that generally opposes anti-bullying initiatives here would like to sue somebody for ridiculing them. "Do I have a lawsuit?" Seriously, protestor? In order for the complainant to have standing to bring a lawsuit, he/she will have to demonstrate to the judge that he/she is an aggrieved party, in other words, that he/she was photographed wearing something ridiculous at Wal Mart or Wal-Mart or WMT.

We kids used to get our pictures taken with a "Real Live Cherokee Indian Chief!" when we visited Gatlinburg. As if the Trail of Tears hadn't been bad enough.

mayor_quimby

They sell black Elvis paintings, and on velvet, no less??? I must have one.

MzNicky

And to think, I specifically hyphenated "black-velvet" in order to prevent this sort of misapprehension.

GOPCrusher

They are easy to obtain at many of the Southern art galleries, that are easily mistaken for a van parked along side of the road, usually with the curator sitting in a lawn chair and a Confederate flag proudly waving.
Another favorite work is George Bush weeping as he walks away from the wreckage of the Twin Towers, with Zombie George Washington and Zombie Abraham Lincoln consoling him.

Biff

Really looking forward to Zombie "W".

chicken_thief

Zombie Cheney could be any second now….

Future Expatriate

Pshaw! Zombie Cheney's been here for years already.

tessiee

True story: Bruce Springsteen was in a five and dime store in South Jersey that had velvet Elvis paintings *and* velvet Springsteen paintings. He tried to buy one of the latter, but the guy behind the counter told him: "Aw, you don't wanna buy that. It's gonna go on sale next week."

First link is NSFS, (sanity). Sucked me right down a vortex into an era I honestly thought died an eon ago, along with the cheesy neon outlining the motel rows of 2-horse towns that were bypassed by the interstates. SHuddderrrr.

I confess to reluctantly shopping at Waly-World on a regular basis. First of all, it's nearby and the alternative is driving 20 miles to go to a Lowes or Home Depot which are as bad or worse. The workers at this Wal-Mart are mostly older retired people who are insanely nice given their low pay and constant overwork and this is not exactly an area that attracts a lot of hillbillies (except the west Jersey hillbillies – sort of like upscale hoboes)

All of the smaller hardware stores around here went out of business when Wal-Mart came, and frankly, when you're buying a bag of peat moss, it makes zero sense to spend $5 in gas to purchase the same sack of dirt someplace else where it's 50% more expensive.

If there was a better alternative I'd gladly use it, but unfortunately, we've stuck ourselves with these miserable giant companies controlling everything…

For example last week I went to Lowes to pick up some lumber for a hobby project. Since it was cold and didn't want to set my saw up outside, I figured I'd ask the friendly associates to cut the wood for me – which they do for free. After spending 20 minutes finding someone trained to use a SAW, I ended up with lumber cut on a small diagonal because "I been tellin' them that they need to replace this thing, but they don't do nuttin'" Thanks for informing me of this, as you load it into my shopping cart.

My area is about to get its first WalMart, which is taking over a mall retail space previously used by a failed Gottschalks, a failed Borders and one or two other failed chains. I'm hoping WalMart has just as much luck as the rest of them. As for lumber, I'm happy to be too far away from Lowes and Home Depot to be tempted by their prices. I've decided I kind of like helping support my local economy on occasion by buying from one of the locally-owned stores.

And it's all your fault. If only you'd bought more local bat guano and perlite, they could have held on . . .

I'm lucky in that not only am I surrounded by old-growth redwoods, but I also have access to quite a few local lumber mills. Sure, they're all struggling and will probably fail eventually, but as long as Big Weed is going strong, I won't have the focus to worry about the decline of everything else. Our green economy is thriving, even if the rest is failing. I really should look to the future and either get a law degree so I can be a defense attorney or get a decent pair of micro-tip shears and become a trimmer.

They came in by stealth — all the paperwork filed left off the retailer's name, so there was nothing to protest. Since it will (in theory) be the same sort of retail space as the previous business, they were able to skip a lot of stuff. This means that it will be a smaller Wal-Mart, and they can't offer certain things like fresh produce, but I'm sure they'll be as positive an influence here as they are elsewhere.

Loaded_Pants

My parents are really fucked when it comes to food shopping choices. The closest town has only a Super Center Wal-Mart & a Save-A-Lot (which, believe it or not has a worse food selection than what's available at Wal-Mart). Neither like to drive very far so they end up going to this town to shop for food. I always try to tell my Mom that what she eats has contributed to a lot of health problems that she now has but it doesn't do any good. Her reasoning is that, if it's cheaper, it's better.
Now I'm depressed…time to open another bottle.
Merry Fatmas, everyone!

Arken

That lady has quite a bad gough. Maybe she needs some robitussin.

Nothingisamiss

Damn. Did I not read down the comments before posting? Wonkette 101- "You may not be as clever as you think you are, read everything else first."

Arken

People read comments before posting?

snackypants

Whenever I accidentally post the same thing before reading, I just tell myself that we're all just sharing one huge Wonkette brain. It's a goddamn mind meld here with you people.

Loaded_Pants

I like to think that it's just 3 people commenting using different handles. You know, like at conservatives4palin.com.

"Walmart single-lowered inflation." I thought it double-penetrated Mom and Pop.

SorosBot

And also, someone needs to know how the world works; because generally, low inflation is bad for poor people, who usually owe more in debts than they have in savings; it is however very good for debt-holders, like banks and credit card companies.

I was trying to explain this to a goldbug in the bottom half of Nate Silver's sellout to blog with the New York Times.

It's actually a little embarrassing, to see someone presume to lecture others on the poor, inflation, and debt, while making a fundamental error so glaringly and intuitively obvious that an Econ 101 student would know better (Simply: you borrow a $100 from me, and pay me back $100 in 80 years, when inflation has reduced the purchasing power of a benjamin to that of $10 in 2011 dollars. Who just won inflation, and who lost?)

ShaveTheWhales

Well, this works for people who aren't on fixed incomes, of course.

Biel_ze_Bubba

Depends … are you a credit card company charging me a 29.999% APR?

Negropolis

Being so critical of a family because of its wealth sounds to me like coveting your neighbor’s wordly goods.

One of many reasons I now avoid my local "news" site — too many posts with lengthy quotes from the Bible (usually from the Old Testament, the inadvertently ironic citation source for most of these "Christians"), always concluded with a way-Christlike "sorry you'll be burning in Hell while I laugh at you from Heaven, you idiot libtard" remark.

V572 the Merciless

This is really the only place I can bear to read comments. It was here, for instance, here I learned that Sarah Palin's 2008 candidacy was part of a vast conspiracy.

Code or coincidence?
Sarah Palin and John McCain claimed to be a Mavericks
Mark Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks
Obama claims his basketball name was Barack O'Bomber
Sarah Palin claims her basketball name is Sarah Barracuda
Obama claims to have been born in Hawaii
Sarah Palin claims to have attended school at Hawaii Hilo and graduated from U of Idaho in Moscow Idaho
Sarah Palin claims to be able to see Russia from her house
Mark Cuban was under investigation for insider trading of a search engine company named Mamma
Sarah Palin claims to be a Mama Grizzly
Obama was a Chicago Senator
Chicago Bears Chicago Cubs Mama Grizzly

SorosBot

I do so hope our little conspiracy nut returns; she or he was fun.

Loaded_Pants

I check my hometown/area "news" sites everyday–mostly to see which former classmate of mine was busted for a meth lab or inappropriate contact with a minor.
But if the story has any taint on it about religion, most comments pop up from "Christians" who end up misquoting scripture. And god (or whoever) forbid if it's a political story that even mentions Obama. The racists come out in droves on those.

MzNicky

Yep. I hear ya.

tessiee

"But if the story has any taint on it about religion"

Huh huh huh, you said "religion".

samsuncle

Whenever my self of steam is peging the E mark I go to Walmart look around at my fellow shoppers and my tank returns to F.

BaldarTFlagass

You could save yourself some time and gas money by just going to that People of Walmart link that Katydid posted up the board.

I would like Wal-Mart to consider hiring the posters of Wonkette to do their schilling. Imagine the pithy defense of the indefensible that this team could provide given a big enough pile of Kugerrand’s. I challenge you to read the present dreck your off shore slave wage bloggers are turning out and do the value proposition. Some time low cost ends up costing you more in the end—- Wonkette we cost more because we are worth it!

HateMachine

But you've already stated the problem with that yourself. We're at the top of the game here and we know it. Snarking on a volunteer basis is one thing, but if we sell out it won't be cheap.

Going with the cheap, crappy alternative is just business as usual for the Waltons.

Loaded_Pants

I don't come cheap. And I mean "come" in every definition (or spelling) of the word.

user-of-owls

Schilling? Kugerrand's?

Christ, so now Walmart's trying to drive the US Mint out of business by offering Sav-Mor Currency Units?

heathenette

I have to admit that I do sometimes shop at EvilWal-Mart, but not much, anyway, a few years ago I swear they were selling Easter Bunny dollars with real government numbers etc, etc, I don’t know how it worked, but it looked like it was actual US dollars, good for legal tender-with Evilwalmart the backer of said dollar. I didn’t buy one-just saw others, now I almost wish I would have for shear weirdness of it.

mayor_quimby

You mean like this? http://www.walmart.com/cp/1073524
No, they totally won't try to replace or devalue the dollar once everybody just has Wal-Bucks. It'd never happen.

Biel_ze_Bubba

Crowdsourcing the snark sounds like a winner. Can we patent the idea first?

BaldarTFlagass

Is "pussbag" the correct spelling? I always thought it was spelled "pus-bag," at least when we are talking about Erick Erickson.
It's the little things that make life such a big deal.

I agree, "pus-bag" is in my (handwritten, custom) Associated Press stylebook. Although "pussbag" is also kind of a good name for Erick Erickson, although it insults vaginas by implying Erickson has ever seen more than one.

Oh, and also, I like to watch the Antiques Road Show because they will have a person sometimes that will have a thing that I know about…except when they do their Road Show in the South, because then the people are all like bringing Civil War junk that I don't care anything about. So this art museum will probably be just a bunch of dumb Civil War stuff.

Loaded_Pants

Confederate LIBEL!

ThundercatHo

I got a triple gough with the Malwort post, our President signing the War Powers Act and the fucking holidays. It wasn't quite as bad as some North Korean citizens collapsing in the street with grief but, you know, just fuck all this shit.

Local_Mojo

You ought to see the poors using the public library in our small, Alabama town! They dress funny and smell bad. I should start a photo gallery. Some of the children are even wearing non-ironic, hand-me-down Sesame Street sweatshirts. How Twentieth Century is that?

Damn you, Andrew Carnegie! Otherwise, they would go to Starbucks to stay warm, in a well-lighted place, and support capitalism by buying overpriced espressos. Oh, and the librarians are grumpy and barely make a living wage. It's like Wal-Mart, but even cheaper — like free.

chicken_thief

Thanks to that fucking communist, Ben Franklin. How 'bout creating some jerbs and gettin' the poors off the government tit, Ben?!!

Loaded_Pants

Librarians: "I got a masters & I spend most of my days telling these smelly people where the restrooms are…fuck my life."

tessiee

"I don't need this! I have a Master's in Folklore and Mythology!" — the Comic Book Guy

jodyleek

Huney, dont let me fergit to go to Wallmart and get some cedar cheese, 2 pacs a peace cigs and some a those cakes we like!

OzoneTom

Jody, I am sooo glad that ya fownd my shoping list! Teh ole laddy will open up a can o'whoopass on me if I fergit sumpin!

Sheet! Thanks for mentioning the humbergur meet. I showd up withoot that hand sheed be all like "That shit dun't flush meester!"

Asif wii needed another domustk aboose visit fome thos pigs.

finallyhappy

I do not understand some of the comments supporting Walmart and their policies towards employees(on the Goldberg article)- not about the museum. Are these PR people or just dumb rightwingers? People don't have choices about where they work sometimes and places like Walmart(and others- like the big company where my daughter works)-keep benefits for people who work more hours. Then they make sure that almost no one gets enough hours. When people left the place my daughter works- they didn't offer the current employees more hours- thy hired more young people who need to get some work – without benefits but at least some pay.
.

SorosBot

These are the same people who scream "get a job!" at the unemployed, so no they do not understand that people in sucky jobs can't just leave them for a good one.

Doktor Zoom

Get a job!

tessiee

The Food Lion supermarkets in North Carolina were required by law to put their employees on the group insurance policy after they'd been working there for 2 months. Guess what happened to them after they'd been working there for 1 month and 28 days.

Your respectable Gilded Age capitalist thought the best he could do was to lower wages to mere subsistence levels. The Waltons have outdone that: wages lower than subsistence level can now be augmented by food stamps and welfare, paid for by taxes on the middle class. Their wealth is subsidized by the state.

tessiee

Don't forget the emergency rooms that their uninsured workers have to rely on for health care. Our taxes pay for that, too.

Is Walmart that place where you go to buy toilet paper by the pallet, salsa in 5-gallon tubs, and mayonnaise in 55-gallon drums?

kissawookiee

Bargeloads of toilet paper and mayo are the purview of Walmart metastasis Sam's Club. Salsa is either suspiciously Messican or suspiciously elitist (New York City!), so they probably leave that to fancy-pants Costco.

MzNicky

Yeah, but then the next week they have to go back and get them again.

GOPCrusher

True story. My mother started working for Wal-Mart in Branson, MO. in 1978 and retired in 2009. At no time did she have a Sam's Club membership. Wal-Mart would not pay for their employees to have a Sam's Club membership, if they wanted to shop there, they had to buy their own.

Biff

Salsa in Walmartian is ketchup.

heathenette

Nope-that’s CostCO. They also have mustard in a handy 100lb jar for ALL your mustard needs. (For the next millennium!)

tessiee

*flat affect*
Welcome to Costco. I love you.

[In fairness, I should point out that I've read that Costco is actually pretty "blue".]

DaRooster

"… as long as they continue to be customer friendly…" ?!?

What are other stores doing these day?
-Barring the doors?
-Spitting on customers?
-Suffocating people at the check out (with big smiley face bags)?
Of course they are "friendly"… even I could be friendly if I were making 2-3 million per year off of poor people that can't find better jobs locally

Redhead

Isn't WalMart the one where someone's been hiding needles in the toys and clothes? Errrr….

SorosBot

And it's where one of their employees was trampled to death by a black Friday mob a few years back.

not that Dewey

And where a lady was cooking meth in the aisles.

DaRooster

Job Creators…

MzNicky

And where the Knoxville, TN police shot to death a shoplifter a few weeks ago. Not to worry, the shopping continued uninterrupted. True story.

Redhead

To be fair, unless you list a specific location and year, that could apply to most of the big box stores.

A quick lookie at the The Crystal Bridges Museum web site shows their collection is fully clothed. Do they exhibit any art with, gasp, bare trees? Or even more frightening, none boobies. How can you have an art museum with none boobies?

Guppy

"first claiming to be seriously concerned about plight of the average Walmart worker while at the same time making fun of “white trash”, the entire state of Arkansas and the people who shop at Wal mart."

It's sad/pathetic when Walmart workers vote to cut their own food stamps programs. It's infuriating when they drag the rest of the country down with them. It's the difference between suicide and murder.

"Also, where do those Southerners get off thinking they can appreciate art!?"

Art appreciation is something that comes with education. Southerners continually cut their education budgets, lest they tax the "job creators" like the Waltons.

"Now let’s all go to Target,"

Nope. Contributors to Minnesota Forward can still go die in a fire.

An_Outhouse

There is a nice art school somewhere in Tennessee. I stopped there once and was very impressed. The food in their cafeteria was excellent. I have no idea where though. It was in the middle of nowhere and we stopped because it was kind of an 'adventure/roadtrip' kind of thing. No, we were not tripping.

Guppy

Sure, in Dixie you can get yourself an art degree (after saddling yourself with student debt to attend a private school), but the only people around who'd patronize your work would be your alumni.

Not only are education budgets getting axed in general, but non-STEM degrees (and even non-STEM courses) are getting axed the most and the soonest.

You must not be stuck in the "T" like me. Because being here, for however long for whatever reason, makes a man wonder, daily, about his superiority.

Negropolis

I don't know. I'm bred and born in the north, but for every hillbilly redneck, we've got us a snowbilly frostback.

Redhead

"when the mom and pop shops and others have goughed them."

Does she mean coughed on them? Because, well, bird flu, and redneck cooties.

Not to mention – yes, I'm sure you WILL shop there until your dying day, every three days or so, after some cheap piece of crap you purchased for less breaks in three days and you have to replace it with another cheaper, more poorly made (but less expensive!) piece of crap because god forbid you not stuff your doublewide full of crap. Yay mindless idiotic consumerism from mindless idiots who completely miss the point in their search for more cheetohs!

"The fact that Walmart single-lowered inflation by about 8% during the 90s, which has done much more for the poor than almost any government program is beside the point." You're right, it is beside the point since they also drove down wages and benifit standards across the nation while doing everything they could to destroy American manufacturing by forcing their suppliers to offshore to China. Also, your grammar makes you sound like a nit-wit.

Funny, I'm listening to NPR while commenting on Wonkette and they just ran a story about Wal-mart pulling infant formula from their shelves after an baby died from a rare bacterial infection after being fed said formula. This is the kind of shit that happens when we engage in a race to the bottom of retail pricing. I fully expect Wal-mart to continue to lower prices until our entire food system is unsafe and our water is undrinkable. I mean, they put formaldehyde in their beer in China as a clarifying agent. I guess if it's good enough for the Chinese then it must be good enough for us!

SorosBot

Well my evil governor, along with many other evil Republican governors, are doing their best to make our water undrinkable by encouraging the water-poisoning, earthquake-causing practice of fracking.

GOPCrusher

Well the children's toy products they sell are painted with lead based paints.
Love the fetus, hate the child!

spends2much

Pregnant lady gets poisoned by lead based paint and miscarries? Jail time! Infant gets poisoned by lead based paint and dies? Capitalism!

The fact that Walmart single-lowered inflation by about 8% during the 90s

I wonder where I got the idea that I'm smarter than people who shop at Wal-Mart?

KeepFnThatChicken

I guess I don't see a problem here, either… I mean, her contribution probably can be viewed as equally as Rocket City Rednecks for Huntsville, Alabama, or New Hampshire's Stellafane. I mean, she is making a contribution to culture in Arkansas… how fucking bad can that be?

For some, sure, it may seem wasted. But some will grow up with the resource, and learn to embrace their world differently. I mean, do we look at the charitable contributions of Carnegie and Rockefeller through the same lens? They've been transcended into benevolent deism now.

"I will shop Walmart until my dying day as long as they continue to be customer friendly." Ironically, you will die of ass cancer that you got from some toxic peice of crap that you bought at Wal-mart. But as long as that old dude greets you with a smile on each trip, than I guess it's okay.

user-of-owls

Well, Walmart has provided people with affordable goods when the mom and pop shops and others have goughed them.

Gone out of existence? Which makes the "buy local" mantra even more difficult to achieve?

An_Outhouse

"How wonderful to live in Washington or New York and thus be better than someone living in the South"

Yes, yes it is.

prommie

I carry a murse, a manbag, a satchel, a purse, call it what you will, and I also love to wear scarves, colorful scarves, at that. I love to go into Walmart thus attired, and observe the stares and glares of the troglodytes; sometimes they point, even. I have seen men pointing me out to their sons, no lie. I then start randomely shouting out French words. "Imbecile" is my favorite, with an exxagerated accent (actually, it is impossible to exxagerate a French accent) "eeem bay seeel." Its fun. Most times I am the only person in the store not wearing camoflage (another French word! Like "Chevrolet!").

Negropolis

The only thing that could make that better is if you were in skinny jeans and ironic, thick-rimmed eyeglasses with the lenses popped out.

I used to get goughed at the local mom and pop shop (a bit like Topshop, except for hillbillies) as well as laid, relayed and parlayed. Now all I can afford is a quick knob polish behind the dumpster at WalMart.

KeepFnThatChicken

Being so critical of a family because of its wealth sounds to me like coveting your neighbor’s wordly goods.

No, I don't think that sounds like covetousness at all. That sounds like Jesus.

How exactly does looking down on aggressively stupid people because they are aggressively stupid count as being a "bigot"?

tessiee

There's no such word as "postjudice", is there?

L188188

I've been to Walmart HQ in Bentonville… I even made it into what they call their "inner sanctum", where the regular sales reps can't go, where they have their "executive row" as they call it … even passed a few words with their then CEO Lee Scott…. and you know what? Fuck Walmart.

mayor_quimby

Did they take you to the torture room where they beat you down so they can lower prices year over year? I mean, that sounds like a recipe for a better society, doesn't it?

owhatever

The museum will feature the world's largest Confederate flag. Made in China, but looks real. Kinda-sorta. The world's largest cross will be in the middle of the parking lot, with gas jets that light it up every night, with the flames dancing to the tunes of Charlie Daniels and Ted Nugent. Touch of Dixie Vegas.

SolitaireRose

Wait, all you need to do to get right wingers to comment here is talk about Wal-Mart? Cool, we need more right wingers to give us free comedy now that Bristol Palin's reality TeeVee show has been delayed.

greenpatches

What's a "mom and pop" store? Is that something my parents would remember?

12X34X

I hear one of the new exhibits in that art gallery is a Hee Haw Retrospective.

Loaded_Pants

I have never understood why anyone wanted to name a store chain "Piggly Wiggly" to begin with. Was it a subtle dig at potential customers?

UW8316154

Just a reference to that sucky part right below the Bible belt…

ttommyunger

Wal-Mart, Waffle House and Cracker Barrel; the Blessed Trinity of Southern Consumerism. Do not fuck with them.

tessiee

"The Crystal Bridges museum is a one of a kind museum that will be probably the best in America"

Yeah, so prepare to meet your match, Guggenheim, Whitney, MOMA and Metropolitan. You've all been warned!

tessiee

"It is unreal to me how much hate is shown in people writing about Walmart. Well, Walmart has provided people with affordable goods … I don’t hear anyone bashing those who charged poor consumers really high prices. … As for me, give me Walmart’s low prices …"

I, personally, am OK with it.
Of course, my value system is probably skewed, since I wasn't home-schooled by whichever parent wasn't in prison.

tessiee

"Being so critical of a family because of its wealth sounds to me like coveting your neighbor’s wordly goods."

The fact that they accumulated their wealth by buying sweatshop merchandise, screwing their workers, and shifting the tax burden to what used to be the middle class *does* make me a tad stabby, but I guess that's lost on the Stockholm Syndrome asskisser who wrote that.

tessiee

"How wonderful to live in Washington or New York and thus be better than someone living in the South."

Really?
Fucking really?
Look, no offense to those wonketeers who live there, but the South has been taking big steaming dumps on the *entire country*, not just the North, since they "lost" the Civil War. Part of the reason our political system is a good 50 years behind the times is because no politician gets anywhere near elected office without at least paying lip service to white Christian Southerners (remember the stink they made when Obama said something about those redneck assholes clinging to their guns and Bibles?) and their science-hating, intelligence-hating, woman-hating "values". Sometimes I think I can hear the people in Europe laughing at us.

So OK, I'm pretty much resigned to that. But now it's supposed to be some kind of faux pas to make fun of them for being aggressively stupid and ignorant? Hey, Bubba — shut the fuck up! It's bad enough that you run the country, including the lives of the smart people; you don't get to be popular with us, too.

"We’ll even pronounce [it] 'Tarjay' because we are so hip and ironic!"

Isn't that how it's pronounced?

erekose2112

Almost certainly my fault, as I forwarded your original post to Alice Walton. Thought she could use a good look at things she probably has no clue the public says about her. Apologies if if brought in an inordinate amount of grunting, hooting and poo-flinging from the knuckledragger set.